Raymond Chandler Redux; Gay Fiction; Rain and Yard

I can not possibly leave a discussion of Raymond Chandler without quoting one of my favorite lines, also from "Farewell, My Lovely."

The previous night Marlowe had been hired by Lindsay Marriott to act as a bodyguard as Marriott attempted to ransom a jade necklace belonging to Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle, whose husband is "enormously rich." During the ransom attempt, Marriott was murdered. The first person on the scene is Anne Riordan.who is riding around and sees Marlowe's flashlight. The next morning Riordan meets with Marlowe at his office.

[Riordan] She reached into her bag and slid a photograph across the desk, a five-by-three glazed still.

[Marlowe] It was a blond. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. Whatever you needed, whatever you happened to be -- she had it.

The two great innovators of crime fiction were Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Chandler in "The Simple Art of Murder" said of Hammett:

"[Hammett] took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley... [He] gave murder back to the kind of people who do it for a reason, not just to provide a corpse; and with means at hand, not with handwrought dueling pistols, curare, and tropical fish."

But their influence did not stop with crime fiction, it also created the individual dependent on his own wits which appears in so much fiction from police procedural to the solitary adventurer.

Once upon a time, I mentioned that if I could I would read only books with gay characters. Well, of course, that's not very practical and very limiting.

But at the moment I find myself with three novels with gay characters.

Eddie de Oliveira's "Lucky".

"Sam Smith is a young, sexually confused teen living in Surrey, England. He enjoys hanging out with his friends, Brenda and Pod, and is passionate about playing on the local football team. Then he meets self-confident Toby, another gifted player, who happens to be gay. Toby introduces Sam to the contemporary gay scene in London, which includes Soho nightlife. Sam is intrigued and wonders if he might be gay, as well, especially after he notices mysterious and attractive "Him," a young stranger who occasionally shows up at football games."

Christopher Rice's "Light Before Day".

"A 20-something magazine reporter becomes embroiled in a Hollywood murder mystery in Rice's (The Snow Garden) third, richly developed thriller. It's a blessing in disguise when Adam Murphy is fired from racy fluff rag Glitz, since he'd been chasing a real story involving a closeted Marine helicopter pilot, Daniel Brady, whose association with a pedophilic pimp produced a sordid videotape that led to Daniel's suicide plane crash. "

(Yes, this is the son of Anne Rice.)

P. A. Brown's "L. A. Heat".

"When LAPD detective David Laine first encounters hunky party boy Chris Bellamere, it is to interrogate him about the murder of one of Chris's many sexual conquests. When Chris's efforts to prove his own innocence mark him as a victim, David steps in to save him, and finds himself falling in love with a man who might be a brutal murderer. P.A. Brown's debut is a gritty mystery set in LA's edgy, less glamorous East Side, where gangs co-mingle with gays, gunfire is heard after dark, and where a gay cop like David Laine could live undetected. At least until now."

Monday, I raked the front part of the yard which went rather smoothly.

Yesterday, just as I headed out the door to finish, I put on my little squashed yard-work hat and raked about 80% of it. But it was coming down so hard, I had to stop.

Last night, sometime after midnight, there was a sudden flurry of rain that could not have taken more than 5 seconds. Followed by another one, a few minutes later. But early this morning, it rained flashing water across the carport and filling the drainage area along the south side of the house.

After lunch, and a trip to CVS to buy prescription drugs to the tune of $75, I finished raking the front. Then I took my yard pick up device and worked for at least an hour gathering twigs, limbs, pine cones, branches, etc. I also came across a small tree that had fallen in the night, but it will need to be sawed.

PAX!